


The Life, Death, and Life of Steven Universe

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Image, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Isolation, Loss, Marriage, Outer Space, Past Character Death, Reincarnation, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 04:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20687540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: [COMM] The first problem Steven faces is how to connect to humanity on the same level as he did as a young man, considering that he’s lived for several centuries beyond anyone he’s ever known. The second problem is the fact that he may or may not have just died. It’s a complicated time for everyone.Art, concepts and commission by @sharkman-jhones on Tumblr!





	The Life, Death, and Life of Steven Universe

**** He knew the exact distance from his body to the place he had died. Not in feet or kilometers, but an arc, an invisible projection that he could trace back to the Earth. If there had been any satellites around, he could guess just how far he had risen and the impact that he must have had on the surface to reach here. The floating man let himself turn sideways to face the planet with his body tangentially aligned.

From here, he could just see the vast network of UASD hypertrains and their spread over the surface. Anyone passing by wouldn’t be able to see him floating out against the backdrop of the sun. He couldn’t see anyone. A flash of pain throbbed in his chest. He tilted himself and reached downwards, wishing he could go back and understand it all again. Five massive pink fingers spread out above the ocean, then clenched into a desperately confused fist. This was not his arm. The anterior muscles still felt disconnected from his sense of self, as his self was disconnected from his planet.

What did he know? It was his, it was all his home. His heart was telling a story with a thousand voices. There were whispers of a boy who had become a hero, a hero becoming a father, then an leader, then a legend, and then the boy had died. Human beings of every kind had come into his life and had vanished in waves of loss. The ocean of loss was covered by the countless humans who were still here, still on the planet, and in this moment the man missed every single one of them, even the ones he didn’t know, the ones he would never know. Could he cry? In his past he had cried so many tears that he had felt his eyes wither, and his tears had performed miracles and saved lives, and changed destinies and there were aliens, too, who had seen his tears and been moved, and others who had turned away from his weeping. What did he know? Certainty permeated each image in his mind, but their outlines were unfocused, unclear. The man felt like he was being forced to guess which shapes were being drawn on his back, and the artist was his own hand.

_ I don’t want to be here. I don’t like this. I want to go home. _

Steven knew he shouldn’t chide himself for the immediate emotional response. Acknowledge, accept, work through. He would have taken a breath had there been breaths to take out here. Then, the man’s eyes widened and his mouth opened up as he screamed the answer to the universe. He was  _ the _ Universe. He called out his name several times down to the humans below him, but all the words could do were to echo in his head. Soundless panic and joy shot from his lips as he remembered the last days of his life. Steven Quartz Universe had died in the spring of the year 2895, and he was currently screaming at his home planet from approximately 16,000 kilometers away from the last people who had loved him.

When Steven tried to remember his last day, he knew that he didn’t look like this, and certainly couldn’t exist as he was existing now. The power of his gemstone and his sheer persistence had led him to a couple centuries of isolation, meditation, removal from a world that thought he was a myth. On occasion, the Crystal Gems would gather and present some of the media theories on what had happened to the great Steven Quartz Universe. News outlets liked to herald him as a historical figurehead but with the occasional fake blurry photograph of a man on the street, a cryptid, a wholesome folk legend. The Gems hadn’t accepted a television interview for more than half Steven’s life, and he hadn’t stepped foot in a radio station for centuries. So, they would sit and laugh about how one ancient old man was heralded as the lost great Universe, and then they would let the stars shine down into their estate’s no-fly zone. The last day had been a morning after one of those nights together. Steven had woken up, come downstairs, felt odd, and started to peel an orange. His hands couldn’t grip it right. Pearl took a small paring knife and cut it for him while telling him how worried she was about his health. Steven had smiled and taken the fruit from the Gem, and said that he was fine and that she didn’t have to worry. There was black, there was white, there was stone, there were blurry voices, and then Steven pushed off the planet and flew.

In space, Steven suddenly remembered, he couldn’t breathe. He swore in panic and pulled his arm back before curling up in ball. The pink bubble swirled around him instantaneously. The walls seemed small as the man rested, but he knew this was the right size. His bubble had always been this way. Either he was wrong and the bubble had shrunk, or he was suddenly much, much larger.

But that wasn’t the only thing wrong. How long had he been floating in shock? It didn’t matter how much time he took to look down on the earth, because human beings couldn’t survive in the atmosphere and even his Gem half couldn’t keep his organic form from suffocating or freezing. Steven’s flashbacks to when he was floating with Eyeball in space came to mind. That was nearly a literal millennium ago, and every other trip into space had either been in a ship or with suit- and Gem-powered precautions. He hadn’t been to space since the middle of the 26th century, and that was purely ceremonial. His existence here and his survival for what seemed like the past hour didn’t make sense.

Why wasn’t he panicking, actually? Steven forced himself to plant his feet on one side of the bubble and stand, growing the sphere with his mind. He had been focusing on the Earth for so long that when he looked down at his own body, every thread was blurry. But what he could feel with his massive hands made his pink skin crawl.

He had never worn this outfit in his life. Lars’ days of vagabond piracy were filled with strange getups, and this felt like the best of the worst of the teenager’s choices. The burgundy jacket felt like a giant dried bloodstain over his torso, cut in a style Steven had never seen on Earth and wrapped in such a way as to expose the hole of his Gem. He could feel some kind of spaulder sloping up from the left shoulder. The pants were dark red and surprisingly comfortable, especially compared to the off-leather white boots with their strange golden tips, like a star wrapped around the toes.

Steven’s fingers shook as they trailed from the pointed culet of his gemstone to the girdle, down to the table embedded in his stomach. The stone was rotated like his mother’s had been for her first identity. He was not Steven Universe, despite the memories, despite the flashbacks, the supposed reformed revelations. The man was a diamond.

No, he had to be himself, he had worked so hard to be himself. The man clenched his fists as tightly as he could, closing his eyes to the earth. The impossibility of being brand new was eating away at his nerve. There had been a person named Steven Quartz Universe and there could be no other. He had seen his friends and family reformed from their broken states, seen humans and animals brought back, some by his own hand. He could remember in the garden, after a storm, picking up the body of a waterlogged butterfly and wetting it still with his tears. It was him, it was Steven who had watched the creature glow pink before rolling over in his hands with newly intact wings. It was Steven who had watched it fly over the estate with hundreds of years ahead of it, splayed pink over the clouded sunrise.

He had every memory. Steven reached up and ran his hands through his hair. Even that had changed, and he shuddered at his own body. As an adult, he had grown his hair as long as he could for an experiment, just like his father had done. After a point it had been too long for both him and his family to manage, but there was enough to make several donations at least. Now, it was long and wild, and Steven could see its stark-white wispiness, like bound spider silk. Each strand was completely straight, swaying in the zero-G.

With all the problems of his situation, Steven realized that he had to face the new reality of where he was if he was to understand what had happened in the first place. Jumping up had served him just fine, and he wasn’t dead yet. Steven rotated his bubble so he was once again facing the planet and took one last deep breath. In a flash, the bubble burst around him, and he was left floating in space. The sensations on his skin were immensely unpleasant if he thought about them for too long. Sunlight only warmed him so much in the vacuum of space, but the coldness wasn’t even registering. All he had was a thought, a fact:  _ I am cold. _ He could elaborate if he wanted to, but that short story was all that his skin was telling him.

Gems reformed and shifted all the time, of course, so this sensation must have been nothing new to them, to some of the victims in space battles who became debris floating in the nothingness. Gems didn’t need to breathe, to feel. Steven tentatively put a hand over his chest. The plush fabric gave way, and the pressure was palpable, and there was no rhythm underneath. Instead, Steven felt a strange, muted thrumming, like the static of an old television screen or the vibration of the counter as the toaster cooked bread. He couldn’t help but quiver, and in space, no-one could hear him sob. The lights of his home blurred as tears vibrated on the surface of his eyes before he blinked and cast off the tiny spheres into space.

_ At least you have  _ some _ heart, _ he mouthed; any other time, and he might have laughed.

Dying was the last thing he expected to do. Self-evident as the thought was, Steven had wondered if he was going to live forever, like the Gems had done. But it wasn’t to be, not in this half-human form. Greg Universe had lived longer than anyone had expected for a man whose lifestyle was less than athletic. Steven’s father, exposed to the power of Rose and his child, died at almost a hundred years old, long enough to see his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren and the family that he had brought into the world.

Connie’s reluctance to have children was not as strong as her desire to make a family with Steven. They could be a family on their own, but the most human part of their love, passing on their bloodline, rested in the comfort of Steven’s fatherly instinct. Their first baby was the most beautiful girl they had ever seen. Soon after, a boy, and then one more girl. Steven wanted more and Connie vetoed. There were other parts of their life to begin.

With the assistance of Greg’s monetary wealth and the newly vested connections between Connie and her university researchers, they were able to start anew. Life in space was new for humans, an untapped frontier, stunted by political infighting and a fear of the alien - literal and figurative.

Thus began, independent of human government, the UASD: Universe Aeronautics and Space Development. To spread humanity into the stars, to introduce humans to Gems and the wide array of life beyond the planet’s surface, to spread human love to all sentient races - Steven’s future sight spread as far as his love for all things in existence. The universe was big, and the Universes were bigger. He had wanted for Connie and his father to be included in the name, but Connie talked him down from his  _ Universe, Maheswaran and Universe Love Mission Go!  _ branding. It didn’t roll off the investors’ tongues.

Monetarily, of course it had all been successful. As the investors grew and the family fortune turned into a staggering nest egg for generations to come, Steven felt a strange disconnect. Greg’s millionaire status came at no cost to his soul, but once the family were all millionaires, the Universe name became synonymous with what Steven considered to be a foul evocation of economic disparity. The only major purchase he made for himself was the estate, and he watched from within the walls as money was made, lost, made again, growing to the point where he couldn’t fathom the numbers. Generations of Universes and their children had whatever they needed, and, Steven felt, they didn’t need him.

The Earth’s surface was occasionally broken by the massive rings of hypertrains that looked so small from where Steven now floated. They were massive enough to be seen from space, of course, but only like tiny etchings, like Steven had taken a pencil and drawn across the planet with a perfect granite point. Before they could get into space, the development of technology began on earth, starting in urban transit and leading to the metropolis, before national and international routes could be developed 300 years after their first conception. Now there wasn’t a human born who didn’t know about an Earth unscarred. In the decades before he finally passed, Lars Barriga sat with the silver-striped Steven from the deck of Lars’ ship and watched a train thrum across a black ocean. The stars seemed to vibrate from the engines inside and out. The whole world shook.

“Did you know that things were gonna be this crazy?” Lars had asked.

“Crazy? I mean, crazy how?”

“I never thought I’d ever see a world like this. I never thought I’d have done anything like what I’ve done, but on Earth? I didn’t think we’d ever use solar. Or hydro. I thought the whole thing was gonna go up in smoke.”

“After all we’ve done to save this rock?” Steven chuckled. “Lars, I should be insulted.”

“You’ve done more than save it now, Steven. Look at it all. Look at this place!”

“Do you like it?”

Lars had snorted in either laughter or derision; Steven couldn’t tell, but when he looked, the eternal teenager was smiling regardless, cracking the centuries-old dried skin.

“It’s your home now. We just live here.”

Lars had lived for longer than anyone else in Beach City, but even Gem magic couldn’t last forever. Steven had been with him at his parents’ funerals, at Sadie’s, and Lars has returned for when Connie had passed away. For each child that Steven lost to old age or worldly accidents, Lars had come after to comfort and hold. The man had felt himself getting older, but he could control some parts of his appearance and strength, whereas Lars came dressed in the same black robes with the same teenage face time after time. Before Lars died, Steven had offered to use some of his estate’s resources to find any possible family he had left on Earth. Lars had smiled, laughed, and turned away from his friend. They were in the Homeworld garden, sitting in between the fading stone columns. When Lars lifted his eyes, Steven could see how worn his body truly was after so many hundreds of years.

“Even you’re just a name on Earth now, Steven. What am I?”

Lion had suffered in his last years, roaring blindly and uncertainly against a world that he couldn’t possibly understand. He had turned into the animal he had always been before his body literally fell apart, limbs and sinew turning to dust. Once more, Lars had helped to comfort the beast with Steven, and they had eased Lion into slumber before what was left of his body pulverised itself, wracked with age. In the garden, it had taken Steven and Lars weeks of yelling and deliberation before Steven finally broke down. Lars had seen Lion lost and confused and clearly agonized over his fate; he wouldn’t go the same way. 

He had already told his old crew, each in their new colonies, and had come to Steven knowing that his friend was the only one who could help, the only one that could understand. At peace with himself, Lars knelt in the Garden and held an unnamed flower that could never grow on Earth. Steven closed his eyes before his sword made impact. He kept his back turned to the head and body as he deactivated the warp and shut off the atmospheric regulators. With the Crystal Gems on Earth, Steven mourned for weeks, and the entire estate was almost overrun with the plants that grew from his weeping.

Steven had considered reclusion before then, and the death put him over the edge. Time had worn him down. When he had been merely a great-grandfather, he could still get in touch with his family, see the resemblance and the Gem longevity in their faces however many years down the line. After a point things had just become too much. His descendants traveled all over the world and were stationed on every corner of a unifying Earth and beyond. Despite the blood connection, none of them were truly his family. He couldn’t go out into a world mirroring him but so thinly spread. After Lars had passed, the man cut off connections even with his fellow Gems. Only Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl remained with him, while Lapis and Peridot had secured their own colony and Bismuth was happily married on another planet.

Steven’s earthly presence waned as the berth grew larger. On the other hand, Connie’s rise as a political and economic leader, backed by Gem technology and the unfathomable progress made by the UASD, led her from being a fringe dissenter into a one-woman juggernaut. Even before the UASD had shifted into the Universe Foundation, she had been the strength to Steven’s heart, a speaker for her planet and beyond. International rallying had turned her into a generation’s hero and history had turned her into a legend.

Even now there were debris satellites floating past Steven in the atmosphere, with the white UASD logo emblazoned on the side. The power of the Gems and advances in communication meant that these pieces were mostly for cheap international communication, not interstellar. Steven watched a tiny blinking probe pass by, wondering how long it had floated out here.

Over seven hundred years had passed since Connie founded the Interstellar Federation of Earth and became its first Premier. There were no other real candidates for election despite some international interest. After all, no other human had the support of the Diamonds. Nations came together to support Constance Maheswaran’s new role as the most powerful human being in the cosmos - beside her husband, of course, but Steven had no administrative power as it were. He was a legend, a mythical being, too inhuman. The Gems across all walks of life knew who he was, but every colony had Connie’s face on their currency.

Steven never even thought about another partner in his life once Connie passed away. In the decades after, he worked with the Gems to amass a private library of all her images, recordings, videos and writing in which Connie had appeared. It was never released to the public for any reason. Documentary filmmakers and historians had asked the Universe estate what they had, but Steven only gave what was already known to the world. His children and grandchildren had other artifacts that created a story of Connie that was almost accurate. Popular recreations in movies and television failed to capture anything that Steven had in his heart. It took him over a hundred years to be able to look back and laugh at the images that other humans had of his love and even after that they never stopped being made. Pearl was always there to point out the poor acting and unfounded “facts” as they emerged in each dramatic tale of Earth’s renaissance. Connie was, in a sense, as eternal as Steven had thought himself to be. Floating now, Steven couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps she would outlast him yet.

The unanswered questions would last longer. When they got older, Steven and Connie formed Stevonnie as often as they could, to keep the mystery alive, to bring them together closer than any couple. Stevonnie could run and climb and take themselves all over the world just like Steven could. In her aging days, Stevonnie was the only outlet for Connie’s physical training. There was no more sword fighting and no more acrobatic exuberance. Stevonnie took care of all that.

It took Steven years of pain and genuine rehabilitation before Stevonnie’s memories stopped intruding into his mind. He felt everything they felt, knew everything they knew, and Connie was still there. He would wake up crying, desperately searching for his wife in an empty bed in an empty house. Stevonnie had not died with Connie, but had merely ceased to exist. Steven asked himself: what if they had fused before she died? Could he have kept her alive? Would a human being stay alive with him at the helm? Steven never learned the answers. With human and Gem assistance, he left those questions behind. There was work to be done.

His life had already been taken over. Their ventures into space still focused on finding and establishing life but the primary financial backers were invested in military technology. The Universe Foundation carried a history of their family namesake but had become shorthand in the English language for generalizing purposes. There was so little left for him on his planet now.

What was left for him out in the stars? If he was indeed still Steven, then his human mind would be trapped in a Gem body eternally. He didn’t even know if this was a real Gem body or if he had reformed like Lars and Lion had, to fall apart after a few centuries. No, his body was telling him that everything was solid in his structure, and Steven had reason to believe in his instincts. Instinct was the only thing he had left. From the heavens to the earth, he was alone.

But that wasn’t true either. Steven’s body still managed to twist what was left of his gut in guilt. He had just come from his funeral, and he knew that the Gems were still down there. This wasn’t like a shattering, nothing like that ordeal. To shatter a Gem was to break an eternal contract, to snip infinity at its point. They had seen enough loss to realize what happened to all humans eventually. The arc of Steven’s life had been longer than any other, but it had to end at some point. Or at least, that’s what he had thought. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Now Steven didn’t know how anything worked. The only certainties left were in the hearts and minds of his three family guardians on the surface.

There was a plan. If he could talk to them, they would know what he was and how they could all move forwards. Steven furrowed his brow and wished that he could take a deep breath. Honestly they might not know either. After almost seven thousand years, the Crystal Gems had seen a lot, but nobody had seen anything like him.

Embarrassment of a sort panned over Steven’s mind for no other reason than to solidify that he was still human in his core. Going back to Earth to see the Gems wouldn’t be difficult if he could get his body to cooperate, but talking to them about the fact that he was still alive would be impossible to parse without confusion on everyone’s end. Steven was fairly certain that he had come from his funeral. There weren’t many more conclusions that could top that.

Preparing for his death had taken a number of decades. The Gems had seen humans live and die before, with all of Steven’s family and the old Beach City, but conversations about his own death were harder. He was aging but that didn’t mean that he was necessarily going to pass. Pearl’s rare optimism theorized that he would simply age forever, while Amethyst cried almost every time at losing her friend. Steven had managed to talk them down after some time into merely waiting and observing. Garnet had chosen to manage her future sight so as not to see anything coming, to hone in on the moment and the life of her favorite Gem.

“I just can’t imagine losing you, Steven,” she had told him. “Literally, I can’t imagine - I can only see it. And I don’t think I could bear it.”

“Garnet… What about when it does happen? If it happens?”

“That’s like asking what would happen if the sun left the sky.”

Steven had known they were strong enough to live in the dark. Whatever light came from this form, though, was yet to be seen. Hovering in the darkness, Steven closed his eyes as the sun’s true glare came over his face.

He paused. The man turned away from the light and raised his hands. A pink bubble swelled between them, strong and luminous, and Steven saw the reflection of his face. He looked ancient and ageless, square-jawed and without a fiber of facial hair. The curve of his lips and the shelf of his brow was the same, with the white sideburns arcing down his cheeks. Like his arms, his face was that perfect pink. Steven blinked at his own image, and two deep-set carnelian eyes stared back, the black diamond pupils widening in self-reflective surprise.

But out of all the feelings of shame and fear that could have come, Steven felt more than anything that return to loneliness. Even his Diamonds had been and always would be. There were no other humans like him that would ever exist in all of reality. His life and his death were acts of isolation. Resurrection of the body was as unknowable as it was unexpected, and the mythology of his life would only be twisted further away from the boy he remembered. No history could know him. Pictures of his infancy and youth were sealed away from monopolizing vultures, and so the only boy that remained had split into two immortals - the myth, and the body. Steven had left his legacy behind. For his own sake and for the ones who loved him, he had to move forward with whatever this image was.

He let his hands down and the bubble faded. Steven straightened up, his hair swirling in a windless sky. Strength seeped through his form until he could feel it permeate every hidden crevice of his person. It was time to go home.

What was power? It was the strength to let his body face downwards and to see once more the plot of land from space where he had lived for the centuries leading to his death. Power was the force like magic that whipped his hair behind him like a cape and pushed him against the nothingness. Power shot him back through the atmosphere and rocketed his body at speeds no human could bear without immolation. A pink shield like a nose cone manifested around Steven’s face as he flew with purpose back home. On the planet’s surface, he imagined one of his descendants looking up with a pang on their heart, seeing their white-hot ancestor making their mark in the sky.

Time meant nothing to Steven when he was floating, but now that he could see the face of the Earth coming up to meet him, he had to wonder how long had passed since he had exploded out of the tomb. Everything had been so bright that it could have been early morning. The sprawling Universe estate in all its green glory only seemed to stretch across time zones. Yes, it was enormous, but only large enough to dissuade intruders and grow multitudes. Steven knew exactly where the tomb was - he had requested to be buried away from the world, undesecrated, finally at peace. Wind whistled through Steven’s ears as he honed in on the valley between his property’s rolling hills.

It was a bright midafternoon. Steven twisted himself back in the light, his feet pointed to the ground, obeying gravity out of formality. When he wanted to slow, the man found himself pulled back and quelled almost instantly. The fall was broken with such sudden and natural instinct that he had to force himself to think about what he had just done. His will and his body were so close that it almost frightened him. When Steven was learning about all the things his body could do as a child, he had never thought he would surpass the mastery he carried into adulthood. Now, as he posed and hovered above the wild property, Steven wondered how he had ever lived without it.

He knew he must still have a stomach, because he felt it churning as he began to float towards the blurry clearing. They were waiting for him. They must have seen him by now.

His tomb had been cut from solid marble, and jagged chunks were spread around the crater from which he had apparently exploded. Even though his body was strengthened, Steven knew his mind must still be healing, considering he barely had any memory of his emergence at all. But they must have seen everything. Steven saw them huddled together in their funeral best, black specks on the platform. The burial ground was in the middle of a large stone clearing, hidden away from any prying eyes, and it grew like a target as Steven began to sink lower and lower until he touched the ground in front of the Crystal Gems.

They stared. They had been staring probably since he emerged as a flash in the sky. The four of them were surrounded in trees, birdsong and silence. Amethyst had morphed herself into a tuxedo, with black accents and shirt, and she pulled back her hair from over her eye where it had hung. Garnet was as stable as she could be, and wore her familiar black leggings but with a black jacket draped over her torso. Steven had expected Pearl to be the most formal, and he didn’t want to tell her right now, but the veil and blouse were nice touches. They had all been crying and panicking, so at least Steven was coming back to familiar territory.

“How?”

Garnet let the word hang in the air and waved her hands over her face, the silver glasses vanishing into light. When she stepped forwards, Steven could see just how much taller than her he was. The man remembered videos of his mother, and realized that, comparatively, he was even taller than her as Rose Quartz. Garnet stared up and raised a hand in disbelief. Nothing in the future could have prepared her for this. She ran her fingers over Steven’s jacket, and stopped them on the edge of his rotated Gem.

“It’s me,” he assured her.

He had to clear his throat; it seemed his voice was hoarse from time in the vacuum of space. Garnet’s hand twitched at the words, as if she didn’t recognize it. Truth be told, Steven could barely recognize his own voice as well. The slow wizening of his voice as a human had come so slowly that he didn’t know how much things had changed. Now, Steven could hear the deep power of his words, an ageless command. Of all the strange feelings, he felt like a father again, like his voice could move continents, guide lives.

“I...I can’t believe it. I don’t know  _ if _ I believe it.”

“Steven?”

“Oh my stars. Oh-oh, no, stars…”

Discomfort rose in every Gem as Steven turned to face them one by one. He had thought to come and smile along with his compatriots, and his hope was waning fast. Garnet’s eyes started to tear up again; even without veins, Steven could tell that all of them had been crying, more than they had in their entire lives.

“What...do you remember?” she asked as calmly as she could manage.

“Well, I was having breakfast, and then everything went black, and - um - “

What exactly had happened? Steven paused, and suddenly he couldn’t recall what he had done in between his death and his space adventure. He took a deep breath, scratching the side of his head as he blew out through puffed cheeks.

“I… There was white, a flash, and it was like that time that White took my Gem out, kind of, but then, uh… I guess I just jumped. And I was in space for a bit, and then I came back down.”

“You didn’t  _ jump _ .”

Pearl’s voice was bitter to the point of scorn, and Steven winced as he always had when he was being chastised. But the Gem removed her veil and stared at Steven. It took him a moment to realize that what he was seeing in her face was not anger, but fear.

“There was light coming out from every stone,” Pearl said, “and just days ago, we had sealed you inside because we knew that our Steven was never going to come out again. But then the rocks burst, and we all  _ cowered _ as this...thing emerged. It - you were a monster. And you clawed your way here, and you stood, and you were this blazing ball of light - then, you just shot up and away and left us. Again.”

The reformation had not been peaceful, nor had his exit. Steven took a second to look at the destruction around them, and he could see now the terror he must have caused. Chunks of marble were burnt around their edges and misshapen from the heat. Holes in the trees and shrubbery had been formed when rocks had burst through them. The air smelled like lava. A ways away, three white iron-wrought chairs had been tipped over from where the Gems had been forced to take cover.

“Pearl…”

“What are we supposed to think now?”

“I - I don’t - “

“What are we supposed to  _ feel _ ?!”

The shout quelled the birds for only a moment before they started their love song. Pearl covered her face with her hands, and the veil fell back down as she sobbed. Steven watched with his heart sinking. Truth be told, he didn’t know what he had expected when he returned either. Maybe he had hoped that his return would be joyful, that by recalling his memories he could bring back the time before and the peace that had led the world to where it was. But he had brought light back to a world of shadows, blinding those who had been used to living in the dark. Pearl’s pain ripped through him.

There was a touch. Amethyst pulled back her hair with one hand and held Steven’s finger with the other. The man could see now how big he was compared to his human form, remembering what it felt like to hold Amethyst’s hand as they took walks through the estate. She gripped one pink digit, and Steven felt whiplash from the memory of his first child, the first infant’s hand holding on to its father.

Amethyst almost smiled. She was trying so, so hard. She looked up at Steven with all that stubbornness and all that sororal love, her face cracked with awe. Despite everything, she was happy that he was back. Steven knew it, he could sense it in his soul, feel with hope beyond hope that she cared just like she always had. He hoped that all of them could.

“Dude,” Amethyst mumbled hoarsely, “y’got big on us again.”

The noise that came out of Steven wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was close enough, a bastardized snort of appreciation for his family. Amethyst finally let the edge of a smile come up around her lips, and Steven turned to watch Garnet falter, staring for a moment longer before she let herself slowly, painfully lean in and attempt to wrap her arms around his waist.

And it was a touch he had never felt, a hug he had never received, laugher that had never passed his lips before. This was the ultimate acceptance and the ultimate pain - Steven knew that he couldn’t be Steven again, not like this, not like the last time. The human being known as Steven Universe had left his legacy on a planet that owed its life to him. The human being known as Steven Universe had died. He could ensure that there would be stories, that the world would know that their savior was gone. And they would never have to know about the new Gem who had emerged from his tomb. It was better off that way; Steven could feel it.

Pearl hadn’t moved. She had lost so much, felt as much pain as Steven had when his wife had passed, and his father, and their friends, and the Universe children and their children’s children. She had been there to mourn for them all with Steven. Now, to see this all before her, Steven could never know the state of her heart. It would take time for all of them, but at the very least, she had known Steven when he was mortal.

The strange thing about love was how eternal it was supposed to be, and yet how ethereal it was in practice. Humans loved, humans lost, and the one thread connecting all of their stories was that lone descriptor, a single adjective: “eternal.” Faced with true eternity, Steven understood love and almost laughed. It was so simple - he felt love the same way now that he had always felt it. For a moment or a lifetime, a thousand lifetimes, beyond the death of stars and worlds and beyond love itself, he felt it the same way. And he loved love, as he always had, as he always would.

He reached for Pearl. His arm was long enough now that he actually found himself able to touch her shoulder without having to get up and move. The Gem flinched as soon as his fingers curled around her. There was so much healing to do. Garnet and Amethyst drew back for a moment as Steven knelt in the dust. Slowly, he managed to put just enough pressure on Pearl to ease her forwards - not to force, but to ask permission, if she was able to come to his embrace. Pearl’s hands slid down her face, and from behind the veil, Steven could see her staring at his face. Yes, he thought, I know, but it’s me. I’ve always been me.

Shuffling through the dust, Pearl let herself tiptoe forwards until she was close enough to collapse into Steven’s body. The Gem fell against the man and wept, loudly and without shame. Steven had imagined that Pearl had attempted to keep composed during the service, and all of that emotion was coming out now. Her hands flung as far around his broad torso as they could and squeezed with surprising strength. But Steven had felt that grip before, and he felt the tears rolling down his face, plucked into being by familiarity.

Of course everyone was crying now, and it was a fresh feeling, a much-needed release, oddly happy but not without caution. Garnet was the first to bring up the unanswered questions, with one hand on Steven’s shoulder.

“Do you know what you are?” she said. “You’re Steven, but what kind? Did you… Are you actually a Diamond now?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t feel like one of them.”

But that wasn’t entirely true. He felt stronger, more magical, more connected than he ever had as a human being. He still couldn’t figure out what he had lost. Steven knew there was humanity inside of him, and he would never give up his soul for as long as he was conscious. No, that wasn’t entirely true. The man could never know for sure. All he could do was hope that his character had outlasted his body, and that he could show that he was still Steven. Despite it all, he wasn’t entirely convinced himself.

“So we’ll have to see what that means! Right? I-I still want to be with you,” he said.

Amethyst patted the sniffling Pearl on the back and looked around at the clearing, grimacing at Steven.

“You just want to stay here?” the Gem said. “I mean, it’s - nice, but you’re not really human anymore. You don’t have to take care of yourself like you’re falling apart.”

Steven was taken aback for a moment, but she was right. The estate was massive, but he had explored every inch, delved into every flower and animal and rock and tree. And there was so much to be done in the world, but how could he do that now? Steven took a deep breath as he accepted his own death.

He had spend hundreds of years helping this planet and its people, and helping the Gems with their own strange species. No longer human, Steven had no blood kin. As for the Diamonds and the Gems, they had their own way of propagation, their own stories and memories. He was trapped in the start of a new era. And there was only one way to go.

“No. No, we’re not staying here.”

Pearl wobbled to her feet as Steven stood to his full height. A cold wind blew through the valley, the smell of a turning season on the air. His hair, stark white and glowing against the mortal backdrop, waved with the breeze. Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl all looked up at him. Steven didn’t have to ask what they were looking at. He was a Pink Diamond for a new age. He was not the man they had shepherded from infancy to immolation. They were the only ones who knew he existed, and they were his family, and this was a reign of love that no human could truly understand. Steven curled his fists and felt the power of his Gem coursing through his body. He was in control.

“We’re going out there,” Steven said. “And we can go anywhere we want. We don’t need the past, we don’t need a home. There’s no map but the stars and there’s nothing that we can’t do together. I’m ready to go. I’m ready to leave.”

“But - what about the Earth?” said Pearl.

“I think after a few hundred years of peace, I’m willing to let the Earth go for a bit. It can handle itself.”

“I suppose it does have your mark on it.”

The Universes were universal. After so many children and so many families, there was probably a little bit of Steven in everybody - maybe not literally, but it was close enough. He had seen it with his own eyes, felt himself being spread thin. And now, with his rebirth, all that was a layer of memory, the groundwork for a future without him.

“The New Pink Diamond, ready to launch,” Garnet murmured.

“We’ll go wherever you go, Steven!”

“Yes - yes! For Steven!”

His family and his body were all he had left. Steven could not be happier. In his space travels, there had been limits to what humans and Gems were capable of, places that could not be explored or had not yet been explored despite the extension of the Diamonds’ empire. To reform was to cease the conquest of worlds, and even after such a short period of time, planets had moved and galaxies had shifted across light years. No matter what direction they chose, there would always be something new to see and new to do. Steven had eternity to ponder the universe, and he would never be able to understand that. Star by star, planet by planet, the four of them had to begin somewhere.

From Earth, anything was possible. Steven had built and destroyed and reclaimed and reformed more than any one person in history, and it was time to take that legacy to the stars. When he pointed upwards, he could see through the clouds and through the atmosphere, mapping his memory onto the sky. He smirked, and all the Gems gathered around him, following his fingertip to the heavens.

“Let’s call the Diamonds,” Steven said. “We need a ship.”


End file.
